


Snitches and Astronomy Towers

by bipolarmario



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bipolarmario/pseuds/bipolarmario
Summary: James and Lily do some matchmaking for the younger generation, with a twist!
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 171
Collections: HMS Harmony Discord Writing Fest - Jily Meets Harmony Challenge





	Snitches and Astronomy Towers

**Author's Note:**

> The Jily Meets Harmony Challenge!
> 
> Must include:  
> 1\. James/Lily and Harry/Hermione strictly.  
> 2\. James and Lily must be alive. Either by surviving Halloween, coming back to life, or their canon deaths never happening/being avoided. (Can include either Time Travel or a Canon Divergence event)  
> 3\. Sirius should also live and be free/exonerated.  
> 4\. Lily must at some point braid Hermione's hair.  
> 5\. James and Harry must at some point fly together  
> 6\. Harry cannot have a Boy Who Lived (Or Wrong Boy Who Lived) sibling.  
> 7\. No Jily bashing

Lily was sitting at her desk in the Potions classroom as usual. Her desk was tidy but still personalized. She liked her things just so. Nothing really out of place, but nothing too 'structural' about the set up in front of her. Lily found that visual chaos was the enemy of productivity. Her potions lab was much the same way. Despite them being in the dungeons of the school, she had spent a long time making them more inviting. Potions was an intimidating subject for most and having the oppressive atmosphere pressing around the students all the time didn't help things. 

Along the wall, several flowers lined the ledge. She, of course, couldn't get sunlight down here, but Lily had done her best to try to keep somethings alive. Alice had tried to help her many times, but it had always ended up the same. A dead plant and a sheepish grin from the redhead. The small tentacula on the wall were the first thing that she had managed to keep growing. The fact that they were impossible to kill at all did not have anything to do with it. 

She bit the tip of her tongue in frustration. Lily would have asked to have the classroom moved, but if they did that then there would be a risk to the other classrooms if something went wrong. And while she would have loved to think that those kinds of mistakes wouldn't happen she knew better. Not even from her students, but from her husband in his school days. 

The door creaked open and Lily looked up. Hermione stood in the doorway. She had a small smile on her face and she was hugging her books close and tight against her chest. The slight seventh year was slowly morphing into the adult she would become right before Lily's eyes. Hermione had always been one of her favorite students ever since first year. It helped that Hermione was in her house.

"Hello Hermione, come sit down," Lily said grinning at the girl. 

"Mrs. Potter, I'm sorry to bother you after hours again. But I just didn't have anyone to talk to," Hermione's eyes cast down and her cheeks blushed.

"No need to apologize, did something happen?" 

"No? Yes?.... I don't know." Hermione sighed and sunk into one of the desk chairs. Her books lay forgotten next to her on the desk and she flopped her head down on her crossed arms. She started mumbling a story into the tabletop. 

Lily assumed that Hermione thought that she could understand her. "Ms. Granger I can't understand you when you do that...Hermione, we've talked about this." 

"Sorry!" Hermione brought her head up and sighed. "There is just...there is this boy. And he's driving me insane. And I don't know what to do," Hermione trailed off into a daze.

Ever since Hermione's parents had passed away a few years ago, Lily had been the one to take Hermione under her wing. Lily had such kinship with the girl. Having no one left to talk to because the last connections to your old life are gone. She had felt the same way when her parents had passed away. Adrift and then suddenly sucked into the current that was the magical world. Sometimes Lily just wanted to get a giant pizza and watch a movie. But no, she had to watch Sirius diagram *quidditch* on the weekends with James. 

Hermione had her face down on the desk again, buried in her own confusion and bushy hair. Chaos seemed to float away from the young woman like heat waves on a hot day. For a student that grasped for every drop of control she could find, the chaos that she sometimes made for herself was equal. Lily sighed and slide around her desk to sit next to the girl on the bench.

Without asking, she gently took Hermione's hair in her hands and started pulling the teases out. Hermione flinched for a moment at first but didn't ask Lily to stop. Cautiously, Lily began to braid Hermione's hair. Lifting the different frizzy clumps with practiced hands, she wove the tangles together to form a braid at the base of her neck.

"So there is a boy you like then?" Lily asked curiously. The girl had gone through some emotions right before her eyes just now and she was very curious as to what happened to put her in such a state.

"Yeah. I think I have for a long time. I don't know if I can even tell when. It's just always been there...It's hard to explain." 

*"It's only hard to explain because you haven't been in love before.."* Lily thought to herself.

"You aren't going to tell me who it is?" Lily asked smiling at the younger witch. Lily sat back and observed her handiwork with the girl's hair.

Hermione smiled and shook her head a few times. She felt for the new braid that was tossed over her shoulder. "Thank you," Another blush climbing her cheeks. "Today, while we were studying he gave me this." Hermione handed a golden snitch with its wings closed to Lily. " _Are all boys the same?"_

Engraved on the front of the snitch was the words "Astronomy Tower" and then a small engraving of a sun that was just setting. The detailed charm work was...masterful. Lily was very impressed.

"Well it seems like you have been asked out on a date," Lily said with a grin. The uncertainty and excitement she saw in the brunette in front of her made her heart sing. James always had a soft spot for the girl too. Both of them had always liked her precocious nature and sharp intellect. He might put up a good face, but the man was a hopeless romantic and he would delight in seeing Hermione this happy.

"So you think I should go? What if I'm reading too much into it?" Hermione asked, trepidation written all over her features.

"Do you want to go?" Lily asked. 

"Yeah, I think I do..."

"What is it your feeling right now? Getting it out into words is always better, remember?" Lily and Hermione had to have a lot of conversations about grief when her parents had passed away. Hermione made an uncomfortable expression.

"I feel like...He's my best friend. He makes me laugh, I don't know why, but it doesn't matter what the joke is, when he says it, I laugh. He makes me happy, he makes me enjoy things I usually hate. He thinks I don't notice him watching me read the paper, but what he doesn't know is that I like it. He makes me feel...pretty. Even with small compliments here and there, when he says it, I feel as pretty as he says I am. Spending time with him is just...like magic." Hermione closed her eyes and smiled at no one in particular. 

Lily leaned forward with a grin. "In that case, I think you absolutely should, and here is what you bring..."

* * *

James leaned back in the dining room chair. Lily would have a fit if she saw him doing that. She said it set a bad example for the kids. Harry had only knocked his head two times and James fixed him right up. He liked to test his balance like this whenever he had a free moment, and there was no one around so he didn't see the harm. 

"Mum told you not to do that?" Harry's voice sounded in his ear from what must have been less than an inch away from his ear. 

James yelped in an undignified way. "Dammit, son! I told you I hated that!" he gruffed at his son who sat down in the chair opposite him with a thump. The professor's suite that Lily and he shared here in the Castle wasn't open to most of the students, but since the Potter children lived here for much of the year, they had been given special privileges. 

Harry chuckled. "I know Dad, that's why it is so much fun."

James glared at him. "Well is there something I can help you with? Or did you just come in here to have something to tattle to your mother about?" 

Harry fidgeted in his chair. He had looked like he wanted to tell James something, but then had held back at the last second, unsure of himself. James didn't get to see Harry flustered so much. Harry was a lot like James when he was that age, confident, determined, and stubborn as hell. Thankfully he had favored his mother's intellect which usually kept him from going too full force into things without thinking. 

"You like a girl eh?" James said, reading Harry's face like a book. 

Harry blushed and nodded. "I've just...always kind of thought about her in the back of my mind you know? I mean, being on the quidditch team... some girls have made their interest known...but I never really felt anything from it." Harry said in a tumbling voice that seemed to crash into itself at the end. Harry looked at James and blinked a few times as if he finally realized all the words he had spoken and who he had said it to. 

"Well I'm glad that you caught the ladies eyes, Sirius always said you would," James laughed. Harry's discomfort seemed to fade somewhat. "I did kind of wonder why you always seemed to hold yourself back from that." 

Harry nodded. "It's difficult to explain, I just never felt anything for any of those girls. Then one day, I realized that all the things that I thought I was going to feel for other girls, I was already feeling for one," he finished looking down at his hands.

"So what do you want to do about it?" James asked, trying to nudge his son thought the awkward conversation.

"Well, I want to tell her how I feel. But I realized...I have no idea how." 

James thought for a second. His son was being really serious. Harry was a pretty serious kid, but this was unusual for him. He was concerned with what to do next. This meant something to him. 

James studied his son. "C'mon, let's talk." James wanted to give Harry some comfort while this was a difficult subject. There was one place in the world that his son had more confidence than any other.

Harry followed along silently, but obviously confused. James grinned. After a few quick minutes, they found themselves in the middle of the quidditch pitch holding a pair of school brooms. Unspoken, the father and son darted into the air. Harry's shoulder unclenched and his jaw relaxed. James watched his son roll through the air with an ease that many a professional player would wish for. 

James waited until his son had hollered himself to death with a loop and dive after dive. High above the pitch, James waited for his son to float up next to him. Harry's demeanor had finally changed and relaxed.

"What is it you want to tell her? Be honest, I won't laugh or judge. I promise." James said, matching Harry's tone. 

Harry studied his father for a second and James felt like he was being scanned clean through. Harry closed his eyes and smiled, letting the air rush around him. "I want to tell her how beautiful she is. I want to tell her that I love watching her read. That I notice the way she scrunches her nose when she reads the paper. I love that the worse the pun, the harder she laughs. I want to tell her that spending time with her is the most magical thing to me here at Hogwarts." Harry trailed to a stop and blinked a few times, looking off into the distance again. "I just want her to know, that for all those things, there isn't possibly anyone else I could love."

"Love?" James asked surprised. 

"Yeah, I think so," Harry said, blushing deep deep scarlet. 

James grinned, he knew the feeling his son was describing. There was a red-haired witch down in the dungeons teaching morning classes right now that he had felt that way about. "Well, then I have an idea...."

* * *

Hermione slid down the hallway towards the Astronomy tower. Her heart was beating fast out of her chest. She was amazed that no one had come running yet since there was no possible way that the hammering of her heart wasn't heard around the castle. She shook her head and continued walking. She didn't want to get distracted too much by errant thoughts, Hermione needed to be preparing herself mentally for what was about to happen. 

She pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out to find him already there. His raven hair tussled in the ever-present breeze at the top of the tower. The sun was slowly sliding under the horizon as the sunset approached and graced the sky with hues of yellow and tangerine. For a moment his profile was etched into the sky behind him, the contours and cuts of his cheeks and chin slicing through the shapes of the clouds behind him. It was almost picturesque. 

"Hey Hermione," Harry smiled as he turned to face her. His smile seemed to gain a thousand watts of power as he turned to her. She returned the grin subconsciously, she wasn't sure she could stop herself if she wanted.

"Hey yourself," She said coyly. She didn't know where the behavior was coming from, it wasn't what she had rehearsed on her way here. "I brought you back the snitch, by the way, it was a cute way to ask me here," she smiled and held out her hand.

For a second Harry and Hermione were both touching the snitch. In a golden puff, the wings spread out and the snitch hovered the air.

It flew over their heads a few times and finally came to a halt hovering between them. Softly at first, but slowly growing louder. Hermione heard Harry's voice coming from the snitch. *"I want to tell her how beautiful she is....."* Hermione hung on every word, too excited to even take a breath as she heard Harry's voice. By the expression on his face, Harry had no idea what was happening either. 

The voice came to a stop and Hermione locked eyes with Harry. 

"That...bastard..." Harry muttered, "I didn't know it would do that....but yeah. Before you ask, yeah I mean it...." Harry grinned. Hermione hadn't felt this kind of excitement in her entire life. The years of darkness after her parents had died still clung to her, but Harry had been there with her through all of it. And here he was now, feeling the same way she did. She was bursting to tell him.

"Wel-." Hermione was cut off when the snitch started speaking again. This time her voice came out *"I feel like...He's my best friend...."*

Harry's eyes were wide and he looked at her. 

"But how...."

"I don't care,"

Hermione kissed him, letting herself fall further for the man she had been in love with for so long.

* * *

"Using the snitch again was lazy James."

"It's not crazy if it works...." 

FIN


End file.
